


Face of gold, heart of coal

by Harpokrates



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: M/M, Written before mandalorian season 2
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:41:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27342142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harpokrates/pseuds/Harpokrates
Summary: His boss is dead, his armor's missing, and his head's a mess. Boba gets himself out of the Pit of Karkoon
Relationships: Boba Fett/Luke Skywalker
Comments: 21
Kudos: 125





	1. Chapter 1

Fett leaned against the wall and struggled not to bash his head into it. He liked jizz, he really did, but Rebo and his band mangled it, and Snootles was popular enough with the bossman that her sixty thousand credit for offing another unfortunate boyfriend, wouldn't cover the recharge packs it would take to blast his way out of the palace.

The noise grated on his ears, but what was worse than that were the low bellows of the wook echoing up from the cells. Fett gritted his teeth. He could seethe privately within the confines of his helmet; it was the best part of being Mandalorian. Chewbacca was here and alive, and Solo was unfrozen and stumbling Carbonite drunk. The only good thing about working for Jabba again was Solo trussed up and on display on the wall, and now, he couldn't even have that.

Jabba's new eyecandy grunted as he yanked on the chain around her neck. Fett glanced over at her, only to be sneered at. Whatever. He liked her better when she was threatening to kill everyone with a thermal detonator. Solo didn't know how good he had it.

She'd probably fare better against the rancor than poor Oola had, but poor Oola had been looking for excuses to die since day one of her somewhat voluntary employment. Too bad it was in such a gruesome way. Malakili'd been picking jewelry out of the rancor's teeth for weeks.

Fortuna ducked low to whisper something into Jabba's timpanic membrane. The Hutt grunted, and waved him away to the door. Another visitor. Maybe this one would be hauling in one of Jabba's many relatives, on whom he had a bounty. Ziro, maybe. It'd be fun to see the rancor try and chew through his slimy hide. No, this was Jabba, and he really didn't like his cousin. Ziro would go to the pit of Karkoon. That'd be a fun trip, especially since Fett was notorious enough not to get stuck on Hutt hauling duty. 

His fantasies of a fun afternoon were dashed when a twiggy human in a cloak walked in instead. Fortuna sounded dazed as he announced the human, a bit like he was spice-addled, which was odd because he was very vehemently against it's use. 

Jabba slapped him and bellowed in outrage as the human pulled back his hood.

Fett was surprised to find that he recognized the human; he was worth ten million credits alive, and about half that dead, on an Imperial bounty. He didn't like to mix jobs, but he'd consider working for Jabba and the Empire at the same time for that kind of price tag.

The kid talked big talk, and he also sounded a little spice-addled, but with the things he was saying, Fett assumed he was high off his own ego.

Miss Eyecandy spoke up, but before Payday could move, Jabba dropped the floor out from under him.

He wasn't crushed by the Gamorrean who fell in after him. Pity. It would be kinder than the rancor. Fett settled back and observed half heartedly, but it wasn't until the rancor's roar of pain that he actually started paying attention. Payday was scrambling away from the rancor's claws, and stuffed himself in one of the many rock crevices lining the pit. Ah, clever, but everyone who tried that before either died of dehydration while the rancor scraped at them, or died when the rancor inevitably snagged their guts and yanked them out.

Payday rolled out of the crevice, bolting for the exit. If they begged nicely enough, Jabba sometimes let the rancor's dinner go, but Payday didn't seem like the type who would beg. He tugged at the bars, then realized it was futile and turned to face the rancor. 

Too bad. It'd been fun while it lasted.

Then, Payday snatched up a skull and hurled it blindly at the wall, triggering the emergency release for the door. It slammed down on the rancor's neck, killing it almost instantly. Payday watched until it stopped moving, and then his knees went weak.

Fett's knees felt a little weak too, and he was glad he wore his helmet, because otherwise every thug, lowlife, and goon in the place could see how hard he was staring. He licked his suddenly dry lips.

Jabba bellowed in outrage, the beast's keeper wept, and Payday was bundled up with Solo and rushed back into the cells. Fett exhaled slowly. He had a type. He had a type, and Sintas was on Mandalore, married to someone who was not him. 

"Fett," Fortuna sidled up beside him, "Murishani. Lorda Jabba naga uba noleeya unubunko."

"Fine."

Fett followed Fortuna to Jabba's private chambers, pulling off his helmet and pushing his sweat soaked curls away from his face. Tatooine was a horrible planet. If the money was any less good, he'd never come back.

"Jabba," Fett dipped his head as much as he was willing to, and the big slug waved him in. He was already deep into a bottle of hard malt—the really cheap shit, which meant he didn't want to savor it, he just wanted to be wasted as quickly as possible. Fortuna bowed low, and shut the door behind him.

Jabba gestured for him to sit, then slabbed his tiny fist on the table, knocking over his empty glass.

"Slag!"

Eyecandy rushed over, as much as one could rush with a chained leg, and put a glass on the table, filling it with hard malt. Fett put a hand on her elbow when it was half full, and shook his head. She shrugged him off, then filled Jabba's drink to the brim.

"Da-da goo! Kung!" Jabba roared, slamming his fist again. Fett caught his glass before it tipped over, but Jabba lacked the presence of mind, and his spilled over his lap, or what passed for a lap on a hutt. He didn't seem to notice.

"E chu ta!" He shook his fist towards the cells. "Ja crispo wermo."

"I'll drink to that." Fett raised his glass and took a sip. It was slightly more disgusting than usual, and the way Eyecandy was glaring at him, he subtly let it dribble out of his mouth and back into the glass, then decided not to drink anymore.

Jabba continued his rant in that vein: various and increasing insults against Payday. Fett didn't make a study of Huttese—Nal Hutta and Tatooine were basically the only places in the galaxy where it was useful. It was a better use of ones time to learn something universal, like Bocce, or something personally useful to a bounty hunter, like Dosh. Regardless, it was easy to catch the vein, because Jabba was so drunk he could only come up with a handful of insults and kept repeating them.

Eyecandy lingered in the background and filled Jabba's cup every time it emptied, and glared at Fett for not drinking, which only solidified his assumption that it was poisoned.

Jabba caught him glancing over at Eyecandy and suppressing a snort. "Uba naga cheekta?"

"Not my type." Fett muttered quietly, feigning a drink. Eyecandy stiffened with incandescent rage, her face twisting into a grotesque. 'Not my type' was easier than explaining morality to a crime lord, which was a funny thing for a bounty hunter to say. Jango treated bounty hunting like he was still a journeyman protector back on Mandalore, before Satin, or whatever her name was, decided Mandalore needed an image overhaul and booted him. It was more simple to Fett—he was good at it, and it paid better than farming. Still, Jango raised him right for those ten years.

Jabba shook with laughter, slapping Fett's back. "Uto du nek? Bahahahahahaha!"

Fett rolled his eyes, and chuckled along. Jabba kept laughing until he slumped down onto the table, dazed and drugged into unconsciousness. Fett removed Jabba's hand from around his shoulder, and settled back into his seat.

"What'd you put in the drink?"

Eyecandy smashed the glass bottle and leveled it at him. "Touch me and I'll kill you."

Fett held up his hands. He was never unarmed, but he was unarmed enough right now. "Was it morphol? Warferen? You need fatynil to kill a Hutt."

"It was polstine spice. I dumped his stash in the bottle."

Fett barked a laugh. "All you've done is get him high. And probably in the most expensive way to do it."

He tossed the rest of his drink over his shoulder, where it splashed against the wall. Thousand credit stain, there. As for his brief mouthwash… well, it was a good thing Tatooine was so uncivilized. If he tried to submit a bounty to the guild on Imperial Center with even that miniscule amount of polstine on him, he'd spend the rest of his life in jail.

"Where are my friends?" She backed up to the wet bar Jabba kept in his private rooms, searching for something to cut her chain without taking her eyes off him.

"Who?"

"Luke, Han, and Chewie. Where are they?"

Fett thumbed over his shoulder. "Solo and the Wook are in the cells. Who's Luke?"

She glared at him and didn't answer.

"Jabba's gonna have them tossed in the Pit of Carkoon tomorrow." He said stretching back and peering in the wet bar cupboard. That bottle of gardulla was still half full, wasn't it? "Luke is the Jedi, isn't he?"

Her answering sneer confirmed his suspicion. Luke. It was a rather unassuming name for the man to whom Fett was seriously considering proposing, ancient feuds aside. Besides, it wasn't like he was really a Jedi, because they were all dead and no one talked about them for fear of being snatched in the night by the ISB and taken for some friendly Imperial reeducation.

"Do—" Fett could see her force herself to ask him. "Do you have anything that could cut this chain?"

Fett shrugged. "Probably. Here."

He emptied his pocket on the table, then walked over to the wet bar and found the gardulla behind a bottle of homebrew jet juice. Eyecandy watched him, then darted over to the table, sorting through his tools for a bolt cutter.

"Don't touch my helmet," he said absently, finding a bottle of blossom wine buried in the back. Good vintage. Nothing from Naboo tasted right since the Empire installed a garrison there.

"Why are you doing this?" Eyecandy found something promising and promptly broke it on her chains. Fett rolled his eyes. "Don't you work for him?"

"I work for anyone who pays the right price." Fett corrected her.

"And he wasn't paying the right price?" 

"Not anymore." Fett stopped the wispy, stupid expression from crossing his face. Luke. Luke had nice eyes, and better aim. He was probably friends with Solo, but Fett could put up with that. Maybe he'd take the creed and become Mandalorian as a compromise.

"Are you alright?" Eyecandy squinted at him. "Your face keeps twitching."

"Just fine." Fett shuffled the bottles in his arm and put his helmet back on, sealing it with a hiss. "Good luck with that chain."

He saw her face turn red with fury before he left the room, and returned to his own meager residence at Jabba's palace. He preferred to stay on his ship, but when a Hutt offered you a place to stay, you took it. He couldn't even get the guild involved as backup because Jabba didn't offer guild jobs. Oh, he paid more than guild rates, but he didn't like playing along with things like rules and workplace safety. A handful of idiots took him up on the money every year, and a handful of idiots were eaten by rancors or the Sarlacc pit. Fett included himself among the idiots, but he knew it was stupid, and planned accordingly.

Still, he made sure the booze was stashed in a safe place, just in case it took him awhile to make it back. Then, he set his helmet to trigger if anything happened in a fifty foot radius, and drifted into a fitful sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

Jabba was alive, and Eyecandy was still chained up. Fett glanced at her before he wandered up to the deck of the barge to get a better view of the action. Luke took down a rancor like it was nothing. Fett was excited to see what he'd do to a sarlacc.

It was hot up on deck, and his nose kept bleeding, because Tatooine was the shittiest planet this side of the galaxy.

The new little server droid waddled up behind him and chirped a question.

"I'm fine." He waved it off. It looked familiar, but there were millions of R-series in the galaxy. They were popular for a reason. "Actually, do you have water?"

The droid warbled in the negative, so Fett sighed and returned to watching the hoverskiffs circle the Pit.

The Weequay goons of Jabba's prodded Luke onto the plank hurting out from the side of the skiff. He glanced down into the gaping crevice that was the mouth of the Sarlacc.

"Victims of the almighty Sarlacc," that new, prissy protocol droid said, his voice echoing across the dunes, "his Excellency hopes that you will die honorably. But should any of you wish to beg for mercy, the Great Jabba the Hutt will now listen to your pleas."

That idiot Solo blustered up a good storm for a man who couldn't see, but Luke kept quiet until he was done.

"Jabba, this is your last chance!" He shouted to be heard over the engines. "Free us, or die!"

Fett exhaled. C'mon. Stop letting it get to your head.

Both heads, actually.

"You sure you don't have water?" He asked the R-series again.

The crew inside the yacht cackled and jeered and Jabba chuckled deeply, his voice rumbling up through the floor under Fett's boots. He grumbled something in Huttese, and Luke was prodded to the edge of the plank. Fett shook his head and ducked back inside the yacht to shout at someone for water, so he only caught Luke's cocky salute out of the corner of his eye.

The Weequay prodded at him. Luke steeled himself, then leapt off the plank, twisting midair to grab it with his hands, then using it as a springboard to flip over the pirates and land on his feet behind them. He held his hand out, and caught a small metal rod.

It burst to light with a snap, and erupted into a blazing green lightsaber.

Fett gaped.

Skywalker fought gracelessly. It was less like the elegant dance that he remembered Jedi weaving through, and more like he was trying to beat Jabba's goons to death with his lightsaber.

Jabba roared in rage, and Fett remembered he was on a payroll. He pulled himself out of the stairwell and ignited his jetpack, landing across the skiff from Luke. He pulled his EE-3 in a flash, finger on the trigger, but Luke swung wildly again and lopped off the first ten centimeters of the rifle. The Wook tackled Solo to the ground. His hide could take more damage than Solo's.

Fett glanced at it, then at Luke. He didn't get the chance to do anything else, because turretfire from the barge hit the repulsors on the side of the skiff, rocking it violently. Fett was back on his feet faster than Luke, and snapped his arm out, lassoing the other man with a length of fiberwhip cable. Luke struggled for a moment, before he snapped his lightsaber upright and severed the lead.

It was a binary situation. One one hand, Luke in combat was hotter than both of the suns combined. On the other, Fett didn't get paid to stand around and look intimidating.

The idiots on the barge hit the tiny skiff again. Fett hit the deck hard, but Luke wasn't encumbered by armor. He took off running and leapt over to the next skiff, swinging with wild abandon. Fett had to give him points for enthusiasm, but Jango hadn't taught him to use a blade for nothing. It was almost painful watching Luke flail like that.

He pushed himself to his feet and took aim at Luke with his Blastech wrist laser. The Wook roared, Solo grunted, and an electroprod smashed into the emergency switch to his jetpack. It fired without warning, sending him flailing through the air towards Jabba's barge, where he smashed into the paneling. He must have taken a head blow under the armor, because he could gather his faculties enough to grab onto something before he hit the sand, and tumbled down into the Pit of Karkoon.

Fuck.


	3. Chapter 3

Fett came back to awareness when he realized that something was mouthing on the soft parts of his foot. He grunted and kicked, then opened his eyes to ensure that his dream was just that, and he hadn't kicked Luke in the face.

He could put up with a few odd fetishes for someone who threw rocks at rancors.

Unfortunately, he wasn't lounging in the Mand'alor's chamber with an extremely handsome and extremely nude man, he was slowly being digested by an ill-tempered houseplant. The vines holding him in place tightened painfully at the thought, until he was gasping for air through his constricted chest.

He thought nice thoughts. Big, scary Sarlacc. Very intimidating. It let up enough that he could take a breath, and he took the opportunity to get a measure of how well and truly fucked he was.

Fett had his armor, which was probably the only reason he wasn't dissolved by now. Er. However long it had been. His broadband was out, so he couldn't connect to the holonet on his ship and check the time planetside.

No radio contact, no electronics. His targeting scope was out, and so was the small medical unit contained within his armor. No big deal. His blood pressure wasn't exactly an immediate concern. 

Fett twitched his fingers, and felt more relief than he wanted to when he found that all ten fingers were present. Arms, fine. Center mass, fine. Thank Providence he was wearing his codpiece. Legs…

Fett twitched the toes on his right leg. It was harder to get a count, and his concept of sensation was… questionable, at this point, but he was reasonably sure he wasn't missing any parts there.

His left leg. No feeling below the knee. He didn't look down. Not that he could, really, but he didn't try. He knew what he'd see. What he wouldn't see.

Fett forced himself to breathe evenly.

"Anyone else there?" He called out, tinny within the confines of his helmet. He wasn't the only one who fell into the Pit.

Nothing but silence, and the slick feeling of something twisting through his grey matter. Fett shuddered as the Sarlacc squirmed it's way into his mind and plucked out the memories that looked tasty. It hungered for extremes, he realized distantly as his father's head bounced across the sands of Geonosis. It slipped out before he managed to find the helmet stranded on the remnants of the battlefield. Who knew where the head went? Maybe the nexu ate it. Maybe it was trampled by a horde of cheap copies.

The Sarlacc luxuriated in his pain, in that lonely, distant agony. What am I going to do now?

"No," Fett muttered, thrashing as much as he was able. His fingers curled a bit. He bit back a desperate laugh. "How did you do that to me?"

The Sarlacc took its fill and moved on. The burst of joy when he had Windu in his grasp was soured by his arrest shortly afterwards. Prison wasn't as miserable as it could have been. He was scrappy, and Bossk kept the worst of the prisoners away. Anyways, he'd escaped. The Sarlacc continued like that, tasting at upset and content, but never really finding anything as appetizing as Jango Fett's death.

It was an unpleasant and untimely realization that he'd never experienced unburdened joy in his life. It was something he'd have to fix, once he'd gotten out of this damned stinking pit!

The Sarlacc squished him for that, the plates of his armor creaking in protest before Fett scrounged through his memories and tossed it his disastrous proposal to Sintas Vel. She was tough, and pretty, and a crack shot, and she wasn't interested in him in the slightest.

Oh. You're a little young for me, kid.

It was humiliating, the way everything was humiliating when you were a teenager, and at sixteen he hadn't learned to take things like that in stride. The memory of embarrassment coursed through him. He felt his cheeks turn red under his helmet. 

The Sarlacc lapped it up though, squishing in alongside the memory and living it out again and again. It was a good distraction, because Fett quietly realized that he had a full tank of fuel left in his jetpack.

He took stock of himself again. The leg he wasn't thinking about was basically directly underneath him. The other one was hiked off to the side, and slightly in front of him. One arm was pinned to his side, and the other was up near his head. He felt, and probably looked, a little like a marionette.

Fett blinked, and realized that he could see.

There wasn't much to see, but he could faintly make out a writhing mass of vines in front of his face. He closed his eyes before he could see too much and found something, anything where he felt more than a prick of real emotion.

Solo's capture. Solo in general. He was a slimy little worm who liked to play games with people more powerful than him, and he was charming enough that they let him get away with it. Fett resented him for gliding through life so easily. His capture on Bespin wasn't exactly joyous, but it was pride in a job well done. Fett reveled in his own smug satisfaction, and the Sarlacc did too.

He opened his eyes. The optics on his nightvision must have fizzed back together. He resisted the temptation to look down at his leg, but kept the idea on the back burner. That'd be pretty despairing. The Sarlacc would like it. Instead, he squinted forwards into the darkness until he saw a blaze of green: light.

Fett could feel the traces of a plan forming in his head the same way he could feel the Saclacc slither round his memories. He scrambled for something, and tossed it Luke killing the rancor. Lust wasn't exactly on the same emotional level as watching his father die, but the Sarlacc didn't need to be distracted for long.

He twitched his hand towards his belt, straining against the vines. Centimeter by centimeter, his fingers stretched towards the override switch on his hip.

He hit it.

His sudden elation tipped the Sarlacc off, and it crushed him. Fett gagged, choking as the Sarlacc compressed his stomach, ground his shoulders in their sockets.

"Fuck you." He managed before his jet pack exploded.

He managed to direct himself towards the sliver of sunlight, up the wall of waving vines, and out into the glorious, burning sun. 

Fett landed badly on the sand, trying to catch himself on a leg that wasn't there and hitting the ground hard. He rolled until he finally lost the momentum to roll, and settled face first in the hot sand.

Providence did he want to rest, but he still felt like he was burning alive. Fett rolled over and started tearing his armor off, throwing it haphazardly across the sand. He ripped his helmet off, clutching it to his chest, and breathed the dry air greedily. His nose started bleeding.

"Dammit." Fett muttered, smearing the blood along his forearm.

He propped himself up on his elbows and looked around. Empty desert, that was expected, but what he didn't anticipate was the burnt out remains of Jabba's sail barge. Fett rolled over on his stomach and started dragging himself over to it, arm over arm.

Any shelter was good shelter during the day on Tatooine.

Fett kicked his right leg out to push himself the last few inches into the shade. He hauled himself up and leaned back against a half buried couch. In another day or two, this entire wreck would be overtaken by the dunes, bit for now, it was safe. Safe enough. Fett unzipped his jumpsuit and squirmed out of it, and forced himself to assess his injuries.

Extensive patches of pain that would turn into chemical burns. Cuts, scrapes, and scars. His ribs were bruised, and a few of his false ribs felt cracked. More bruising and burns along his torso. Thank Providence his dick was still intact. Right leg: fine. No more burned than the rest of him.

Fett propped himself up and forced himself to look at his left leg.

It wasn't bleeding, which was good because otherwise he'd definitely die out here. And he still had his knee. Positives.

"Fuck." Fett whispered, reaching down to prod at the half dissolved flesh that made up his lower leg. Gruesome. He cast around until he spotted a somewhat unscorched bit of window treatment, and stretched until he could nab it and drag it over. He tore it in half, and wrapped half around his leg, and the other half around his body like a cloak. It was instantly uncomfortably hot, but exposure on Tatooine was far worse than mild discomfort.

Protected from the elements, Fett finally passed out.


	4. Chapter 4

It wasn't being moved that woke him, nor was it the rumble of a Czerka class V Heavy Transport engine. No, those would be dignified. Instead, Fett was awoken when the Jawa sandcrawler hit a rock outcropping and slammed his head into the low ceiling.

Fett cussed, and fell to the floor, clutching his head and moaning in pain.

A nearby Jawa chided him.

"'M not a droid." Fett mumbled. The Jawas' only response to that was to tip him off to the side, where he'd be out of the way while they traveled… wherever. He lied there, while his brains were slowly churned into paste by the shaking floor. He was still wrapped in his curtain, and his armor was nowhere to be seen.

His chest hurt. Well, his entire body hurt, but his chest hurt a little more sharply than the rest of him.

He strained to look down. Just off center of his left pectoral, there was a droid restraining bolt implanted into his skin. He squinted at it.

"I'm not a droid." He said again. No response. "Stupid Jawas."

In his admittedly short experience with Tatooine, he'd found Jawas to be a pest at best, and little thieves at worst.

He could now count himself among their stolen wares.

Fett grunted and yanked out the restraining bolt. It felt like ripping off a bacta sheet, and left a little well of blood, but his head didn't explode, so he didn't pay it much mind.

He tried to stand up, and stumbled when he put his weight on a leg that wasn't there. The stump hit carefully wrapped cloth instead of metal floor, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt like hell. Fett remained seated, and looked over himself. Apart from the sluggishly bleeding bolt wound, he was fairly patched up. He smelled like a bacta tank, but the more minor of his burns looked decades old, and his ribs were back where they belonged. It was a good thing because the way the sand crawler was shaking, any loose rib would very quickly find a new home lodged in his lung.

The Jawa chittered at him, and harassed him until he crawled back into his makeshift bed in the corner.

"What are you doing?" He snapped, lashing out with his foot when the Jawa tried to touch his bandages. A dozen of them descended on him, pinning him down so the first Jawa could remove the wrappings.

"Let me go!" Fett thrashed under the Jawas. "Get off!"

The first one was touching his leg, and his voice hit a hysterical note. "Don't touch it!"

It was over as quickly as it began, and Fett kicked out at the closest Jawa. They left him alone after that, until a small settlement came into view through the short windows. That first Jawa—at least, Fett thought it was the same Jawa—waddled over to him, bearing a metal leg clearly made out of scrap.

Fett looked at it, then at the Jawa. "What's the catch?"

The Jawa jittered, and shoved it at him.

Fett watched it as he slowly strapped the prosthetic into place. It was uncomfortable, and his leg probably wasn't healed enough to use a prosthetic, but it was better than trying to hop everywhere he went. The Jawa didn't pull a gun on him, and it didn't try to stick another bolt to his chest. The offer seemed like it lacked strings.

The sandcrawler jolted to a stop.

"Thanks." Fett said slowly.

He hobbled down the ramp, the curtain clutched around his shoulders like a tattered, flashy cloak, and stepped onto the sands outside of Anchorhead.

The Jawas waved as the sandcrawler rolled off through the dunes. Fett raised a cautious hand.

He turned towards Anchorhead, and was halfway through the settlement gate before he realized he didn't have his armor.

"Goddammit!"

* * *

Pathetic looking humans weren't a rarity on Tatooine. Humans with missing parts weren't rare either.

Pathetic looking, missing parts, naked humans however…

Fett got his fair share of odd looks.

"What was it you wanted again?" The human at the counter stared at him, slightly distracted. Fett pulled the curtain more tightly around his shoulders. No need to advertise.

"Access to my off planet accounts. It's a Mandalorian bank."

"We can't contact Mandalore from here, sir. The closest planet with that kind of signal relay would be Naboo."

"Fine, fine." Fett ran a hand back through his hair. "Is there a public holo anywhere?"

"Dama, at the Sisi Driss, has one." A ugnaught piped up. Fett glanced back and down. "She charges per minute though, and she won't let you use it on credit."

Fett stared at her. "That's not public."

She shrugged. "This is Tatooine. What did you expect?"

Fett stepped out of line, and the dozen people behind him stepped forwards. He turned back to the teller.

"Actually, I—"

"You'll have to get back in line, sir." She said blandly. Fett's lip curled. He grunted, and limped out of the building. No one protested line cutting when he was in his armor.

It was stupid hot outside. Fett grimaced, and looked for the Sisi Driss. It was the only inn in Anchorhead. Frankly, Fett was expecting some dingy shack with an insect problem, to match the planet, but it was to his pleasant surprise that the inn was fairly cleaned and maintained.

It was also very empty, but it wasn't like people visited Tatooine by choice.

"Hello?" Fett called out.

An older woman with sand colored hair poked her head up from behind the desk.

"The restrooms aren't for public use—" she began, before trailing off when she got a good look at him.

"Please don't kick me out."

The woman picked the register off the counter and stowed it out of sight. "Did you want something?"

"I need to use the holo. I have to call someone."

"Do you have money? The line is expensive."

"No. I can get money."

She looked at him, her mouth pursed tightly. "What exactly put you in this… state?"

Fett remained silent.

"Slavers get you?" The woman looked a little less frosty. "Stormtroopers take you on a drive through the dunes?"

He caught the bitterness in her voice. "Yeah. Stormtroopers. Left me out near the Pit of Carkoon."

"Oh."

He really hammed it up. "Took my leg. I just want to call my friend and get someone to pick me up."

She glanced down, and the veneer of ice shattered. "Why don't you sit down? I have some clothes that might fit you."

Fett took a seat in the only chair in the lobby—a rickety old scrap of wood—and worked on his lie. He had a pretty good measure of his false life history before the woman returned with a set of clothing and a glass of water.

"Here." She handed him the clothing and set the water on the desk. "You can change in the first room."

Fett muttered a thanks and hobbled off. The clothes were a little snug, and the trousers showed off his ankles the same way the shirt showed off his wrists, but he didn't have to worry about being charged with a felony if his fingers cramped.

The woman was watching a broadcast from Imperial Centre when he came back, her face twisted into an ugly scowl.

"They fit alright?"

"A little short, but they're fine. Thank you."

"They belonged to my nephew," she said without looking at him, "and he was always rather small. My brother in law was more your size but…" she cleared her throat. "Where did you want to make a call?"

"I have the radio code."

"That's fine. Try and keep it short."

Fett settled in front of the communication console and switched the relays to long distance, then dialed Bossk.

"Bossk," the Trandoshan said, slightly distracted.

"Bossk, it's Fett," Fett said in Dosh, "tell the guild to blacklist Jabba. And Tatooine."

"Little Boba?" Bossk actually began paying attention. "What are you doing, all bare to the world?"

"Job went sour. I need you to wire me some credits."

"That's very funny coming from the man who let me rot in that prison cell on Panna."

"Hey, I was busy trying not to be beheaded. And I came back for you." Fett jabbed a finger at him.

"Fine, fine. How much?"

"About fifteen thousand creds."

"Fif—" Bossk's eyes boggled, "fifteen thousand!? What do you need fifteen thousand credits for?"

"Lost my armor. Long story."

Bossk narrowed his eyes. "is this some sort of scam?"

"No, Bossk," Fett let his head hang between his shoulders, "this isn't a scam."

"You aren't trying to buy some bride, are you?"

"No, Bossk. Just my armor."

"Can't you just run a transfer from your ship?"

"It got possessed for unpaid dock fees. Please, Bossk?"

"I can't, Boba. My father raised me better than to let a friend fall victim to scammers."

"Bossk I will skin you." Fett sighed, and dragged a hand down his face. "Can you at least get the guild to send me a lawyer?"

"What, are you gonna sue the armor thieves?"

"I'm gonna try." The Bounty Hunter Guild's lawyer was wanted in fifteen systems, and could kill a human in as many ways using only his pinky. He had dirt on the Emperor. It wasn't that he negotiated, he just listed his demands and started breaking fingers until he got them.

"I'll put a word for you. It'll be a while, Boba. Dengar and IG-88 are both petitioning to have the Empire blacklisted too, and there's a lot of fingers and paperwork involved with that."

"Fine." Fett spat. "But tell them to be speedy. I won't want to spend another day in this hellhole."

He hung up before Bossk could complain, and found the woman staring wide eyes at him.

"My… husband." He lied. "Just calling to let him know I'm alright. Dosh is an aggressive language."

"Is that why those Stormtroopers beat you up?"

"Yes. It is that." Fett said woodenly.

She shook her head and banged her fist on the counter. "Imperial scum. They murdered my sister and her family, you know. Three people, dead. And for what?" She began pacing across the room. "They claimed Beru was harboring fugitives, but I know it was because one of her son's friends joined the Rebellion. Just association is enough to get your home burnt to the ground."

"I'm… sorry." He didn't care, actually, but saying that would get him kicked out.

She shook her head, and dug under the desk for a spray bottle and rag, then began aggressively scrubbing the counter.

"Imperial dogs."

Fett watched her. "Is there a guild board here?"

"Unions are illegal."

This really was a backwater. "A jobs posting then? I'm stuck waiting here until my… friend arrives."

"Not as such. You might be able to find some odd jobs at Tosche Station. It's just outside of town. And there's farm work."

"Where exactly is Tosche Station?"

"It's—"

The broadcast sizzled, and the human reporter looked shocked for a moment.

"This is Imperial Centre, we—" the station fizzled into static, before coming back up with a different figure. Fett recognized her, because she'd tried to poison him not a week ago.

"I am Princess Leia Organa, of Alderaan." She said. Her small face was deadly serious. "I represent the Alliance to Restore the Republic."

The woman glanced at him, her eyes wide, then turned up the volume on the projection.

"The Emperor has been killed." She said it very flatly, like she was reporting on some other ruler of all the known galaxy. "His reign of terror has finally come to an end. I urge all remaining Imperial forces to surrender peacefully. The Alliance will not stand for the continued oppression of the Empire. Join us in creating a better future, for the entire galaxy. We—"

The broadcast cut out as suddenly as it started, and the Imperial broadcast resumed. The human looked wide eyed and nervous.

"I have a report from the Emperor himself," the broadcaster blustered. "The rebel terrorists are attempting to sow fear into the good citizens of the Empire. Rest assured, the armies of the Empire will not rest until this threat is halted in—"

The woman reached out and shut off the broadcast.

"Well," she said slowly, "it looks like you won't have a problem with stormtroopers anymore."


	5. Chapter 5

Fett hissed as Dama smeared a packet of bacta gel on his bicep.

"We wouldn't need to go through this if you'd stop picking fights."

"I was attacked by an anooba."

Dama stared at him flatly.

"I may have been trying to steal one of the cubs. Tourists like them."

"What tourists?" Dama snorted.

"Some convoy from Imperial Centre. Coruscant. I think they're memorializing some slave revolt."

"Mos Espa Massacre." Dama said, wrapping his arm with a bandage and slapping it. "You're done."

"Brutal."

"You still owe me for last time." She crossed her arms over her chest. "When are you going to pay up, _Lucky_?"

Fett snorted at his ridiculous fake name. It made sense when he was ten. "In a bit. My friend is held up."

The guild lawyer had last been seen headed into the unknown regions on a tip that the Imperial leadership had relocated there. He was a very uncompromising man, their lawyer. Once, Fett had forgotten to pay his union dues, and went to sleep in the _Slave-1_ , then woke up dangling over a nest of gundarks. He set it to an automatic withdrawal after that.

"I can keep it steady with the job listings." It was handyman work, and Fett was mostly useless at anything that didn't involve the capture or killing of other sentient beings, but even he could hold a ladder or make shopping runs for the little old ladies who kept hydroponic farms in the settlement.

Dama's face twitched. "You'd better. Is that what this was?"

"Yeah." It was not. The Jawas still had his armor—beskar was hard to melt or destroy using conventional equipment—and he was going to fucking get it back.

He just wasn't particularly successful.

"Hey, Auntie!"

Dama frowned deeply. "What do you want, Laze?"

"Aw, I told you to call me 'Fixer'."

"I'll call you 'Fixer' when my chilling bar stops breaking when it's over thirty-five."

"Auntie, you're cruel to me. Anyways, did you see? Some New Republic goon put up a reward for a Krayt Dragon! A hundred-thousand credit-equivalents!"

"I hope you aren't thinking of pursuing it."

"Course not, Auntie. Camie's pregnant. I can't go and get myself eaten by a dragon."

"I wasn't aware the two of you were married?" She raised an eyebrow.

Laze waved his hand. "Oh, come on, Auntie. You're worse than my mom. We'll get married after the harvest season."

"Hmph." Dama started scrubbing the counter. Fett took the opportunity to pull his shirt back on.

"Crazy scars, man." Laze glanced at his back, then at his prosthetic leg (the nephew's pants were still too short; his ankles showed), his eyebrows raised. Fett grunted.

"My nephew never gave me this much trouble." Dama muttered to herself. Fett wasn't sure if she was talking to him or to Laze.

"Wormie was a goody-goody who only had eyes for Biggs." Laze shrugged. "Besides, he got into plenty of trouble. You just weren't there to see it. You ever wonder why the needle down at Beggar's canyon has scorch marks on the inside of it?"

"Go," Dama stepped out from around the counter, waving her rag at Laze. "Go, shoo. Don't you have work to do?"

"Only thing to do is play pool—" Laze complained before Dama tossed him out.

"Speaking ill of the dead," Dama muttered under her breath as she walked back inside, dusting her off her hands. The rag was slung over her shoulder. "That's unwise with a child on the way. You don't invoke the dead with a baby around. Although I doubt my nephew's spirit would hex Camie."

"Too gentle for that sort of thing?" Pussy.

"He was a sweet boy. His mother stayed here once, along with his father. She was so beautiful, but she didn't even flinch when I asked her to help me with the vaparator." Dama explained, packing away the first aid kit. "I didn't own the place back then—I was just the night clerk. She was Naboo, I think. No one else dresses like that, anyways, but she crawled up to the roof and handed me tools until Owen's stepbrother took over for us."

She smiled slightly. Wistful. "It was nice to see two people so obviously in love. But that's enough reminiscing. You," she turned on Fett. "I want my money. Don't you lout around all day."

"Got it, ma'am." He tossed her a two fingered salute—a bit like Luke, but it was a snazzy gesture, so he didn't feel that odd about adopting it—and slid off his chair. 

Fett stepped outside, finger already pinching off the nosebleed he would get from the drop in humidity, and headed up towards Toche Station. A Krayt Dragon sounded like fun. It sounded even more fun to be able to get back his ship, and blast those Jawas into smithereens from orbit.

* * *

Fett cradled the slugthrower under his armpit. The extended barrel was buried under the sand, leaving only the muzzle exposed. Fett was similarly hidden. He had Dama's nephew's old poncho tossed over his head, and his lower body was hidden in the sand.

Hunting Krayt Dragons, like hunting bounties, was an exercise in patience.

The sands shifted.

Fett exhaled silently and squinted through the scope. It was, like most of his things, formerly property of Dama's sister's family. The slugthrower was older, but Fett prided himself on, if not mastery, competence in any weapon. Besides, slugthrowers were Mandalorian, and although he made a habit of ignoring Jango's heritage, he couldn't have helped picking up _something_. 

Besides, he didn't consume books like he was starving to death on Kamino for nothing.

He followed the Krayt with the sight until the grey ridge of it's back broke the surface of the sand. Ten, twenty, thirty meters of spine, before it dipped back below the surface of the sand. It was a bit like following the wake of one of the monsters that lived under the water on Kamino, albeit slightly more difficult, as Fett wasn't experienced in tracking things across the shifting sand.

He waited until the ripples trailer away, then slowly pulled himself out of his hiding spot. He didn't bother brushing the sand off. He checked the angle against Tatoo 1 with his finger and thumb, then walked along the tracks of the Krayt.

Fett wouldn't admit it, not on pain of death, dismemberment, or being tossed back in Carkoon, but he was in no small amount of pain.

It probably had something to do with said pit of Carkoon.

His missing leg hurt, rather, it didn't hurt, which was worse, but the crux of his pain came from the blinding headaches he woke up with. They subsided as he dragged himself up to the lobby, where Dama still regarded him as pitiful enough to share her breakfast, but it was like a lingering bolt struck through his temples.

He tired too easily, as well, and there was something wrong with his stomach, and maybe his nose as well. Normally, his nosebleeds would have subsided by now, as he'd gotten used to the climate. Instead, they were worse than ever. The less said about his stomach the better, but he was passing blood from places blood shouldn't have been passed.

Fett shook off the thought. He was fine, and he was going to kill a Krayt and get his ship and armor back. He left a little room in the fantasy for overthrowing Bo-Katan and becoming Manda'lor, and then a little more for Luke, and then a little less for Luke naked.

Fett snorted at himself, and settled down in the sand. It was to his surprise that he recognized the place, although it was only due to the husk of Jabba's sail barge still rotting out under the suns.

_Guess Jawas keep away from Carkoon, too._

He had only just settled himself under his poncho when Tatoo 1 dipped under the horizon, and the Krayt Dragon finally emerged from it's shelter of sand.

It was massive, big enough to blot out the sun, and the sky. Fett looked up, and up, and up, and only glimpsed the head of the beast when his neck cracked from the craning. A hundred meters long, easy, with a mouth like a nightmare and horns to match. Five legs, thicker than the trees they grew on Endor, scrabbled against the sand to haul the creature out of the earth. Its tail lashed behind it, churning up a sandstorm in it's wake.

Fett felt very small, and very silly, holding a gun that was longer than he was tall.

He held his breath, and fought back the overwhelming urge to make a break for it, as the Krayt pawed at the sand in front of it. It quickly covered Jabba's barge as it dug. Fett watched with a flinch.

Every good sense he'd ever had was telling him to leave immediately, and probably leave the planet as well, but louder than all of that, was the dumbass machismo he'd accidentally developed after a toxic overdose of Dengar's company. Saddling a man of his many complexes with an impressionable twelve year old was a sad story for everyone.

Fett pressed his forehead against the butt of the rifle, and cursed silently.

The Krayt was covered in scales, but it's leathery underbelly looked vulnerable. Whatever it was digging for was distracting enough that it hadn't noticed Fett, or Fett was just too small and insignificant to bother with. Barely a mouthful of a meal.

There was a horrible hiss, and the Krayt ducked it's head into the hole it'd made.

No. It ducked it's head into the Pit of Carkoon.

The Krayt strained, the muscles in it's neck tense under the pressure, and all ten of it's legs heaving backwards, but with an earth shaking snap, it yanked itself out of the hold with it's prize.

Fett watched, his lip twisted, as the Sarlacc was dragged screeching out of it's hole, and the Krayt lifted it up, and began to choke it down whole. 

The Sarlacc resisted, of course, but there wasn't much an immobile plant could do against a dragon that was currently eating it.

The last roots disappeared, and the Krayt sank down onto it's belly in the sand, and slithered off in the dusk.

Fett felt like he was about to shatter a molar. The Sarlacc was _his_ to kill. An evil plant couldn't dig up the memory of his father's death and not expect to be burnt to the roots for it. It was personal now, which was an extremely dumb thing for a bounty hunter to do.

He pulled himself out of the sand, and followed the wake.


	6. Chapter 6

It was another three days before he caught up with the Krayt again. He was low on water and sleep, and one could only take so many uppers before they started doing funny things to one's heart.

It was lazy, basking in the setting suns. Digesting it's meal, probably. There couldn't have been enough food on the whole of Tatooine to feed a thing of that size regularly.

For all the sporadic life that Tatooine did support, it was practically a dead planet compared to Kamino. Lifeless, arid, and desolate. The only things that lived here were monsters, and prey, and people too stupid and too poor to leave.

Fett exhaled slowly, took aim at the Krayt's eye, and pulled the trigger.

He was running before the creature bellowed in pain. The noise was loud enough to make him stumble in agony, but he kept his feet under him and kept running, slipping over the sliding sand.

Fett hit the ground and rolled as the Krayt's massive paw swiped at him. Sand stuck to the blood slowly dribbling out of his right ear; he swatted at it and continued to run, dodging left as the Krayt batted at him again.

The distant hum of an engine distracted the Krayt. It cocked it's head and glanced off into the horizon.

"No you don't." Fett hissed, loading another slug and shooting at the beast's face. It shook it's head, roared, and tore after him. It's legs pounded on the sand, sinking with every step. Perfect.

When it's head dipped under the sand, Fett felt his breath curdle in his lungs. One shot, or he'd be Krayt shit baking under the suns.

He froze, then spun, counting the seconds.

Three.

Two. He could see the spine.

One. He could touch it.

Fett sprinted to the side, wishing he had his jet pack, and rolled when he hit the sand.

There was a strangled roar, and an unpleasantly organic squish as the Krayt hit the bottom of the canyon.

"Hey!"

The shout was distant, and faint, but that was probably because one of his eardrums was popped. Fett ignored it and lowered himself over the canyon wall.

It was simple, if not exactly easy, to scramble down the side of the mesa. His false leg kept slipping on the stone, and his hands were tired and his back was tight with scars. It took him the better part of an hour, and the drop in altitude gave him a nosebleed.

Fett landed on his feet with a grunt, and loaded two shells into the slugthrower. The Krayt looked dead enough, but looks were deceiving.  
Fett pressed the end of the barrel up against it's blank, unseeing eye, and pulled the trigger. Then, he pulled back the bolt, and did it again.

Only then, did he finally exhale and slump against the rock wall.

"Hey!" Came the voice again. It echoed. "Are you alright? Don't try to climb up; you're hurt!"

Fett scoffed and rolled his eyes, and loaded a slug to take out the annoying voice once it's owner was halfway down the wall.

To his shock, the person didn't bother with climbing—they jumped. What Fett fully expected to be a splatter stood up, and held his hands out.

"Are you alright?" Luke Skywalker said earnestly, his bright eyes brimming with concern.

Fett's mouth worked a bit. "Fine." He said eventually.

He was torn. Torn between the desire to shoot Luke for getting in the middle of his hunt, or to prop himself back against the Krayt and preen.

Oh, you killed a rancor? Well, I killed a Krayt. Mine's bigger.

Luke didn't give him the chance to do either of those things, because he stepped forwards and lightly touched the blood dripping down Fett's neck with his gloved hand.

"This looks like it hurts." He tsked. "Do you mind if I—?"

He didn't bother finishing his question before his eyes went fuzzy and distant, and Fett's headache receded for the first time in weeks.

"There." He sounded a little strained. "You ought to be able to hear me now. I'm Luke. Are you alright?"

Fett propped an elbow back against the corpse of the Krayt, more than slightly dizzy and doing his best not to puke. "Fine. Odd place to be. What're you doing here?"

If Luke thought the phrase was odd, he didn't show it. "Same thing as you, actually." He gestured to the Krayt. "My friend—

Fett realized that he was going to die about a second before it happened. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Krayt's tail move, felt the massive displacement of air behind him.

Cadaveric spasm, his mind supplied him. Death throes.

A second passed. Fett remained alive.

Luke stood, facing him, and the Krayt Dragon's barbed tail, eyes wide and palm out in front of him. Fett took a few unsteady steps forward, then turned around to see Luke holding the Krayt's corpse still with the power of air. The Force. It might have well been air, for all that Fett could tell something was happening.

"I think," Luke said, letting the tail fall to the ground, where it landed stiffly on the ground, "that we should talk somewhere else."

Fett nodded.

Going up the canyon wall was slower than going down, but Fett had a man to impress. Who knew? Maybe climbing skills were incredibly attractive on Tatooine.

Luke reached the top before he did, and held down a hand to pull him up, which Fett ignored. He scrambled over the cliff under his own power, his false foot screeching on the stone, and rolled over onto the hot sand, breathing for a few moments.

Luke's face appeared in his vision, blotting out the sky. "Long climb?" He grinned merrily.

"You tell me." Fett grunted, and kipped up before he fell asleep.

Luke snorted. "Anyways, I'm also here for the Krayt Dragon. Well, more accurately, I'm here for you, the bantha who took the bounty."

Fett blinked, and groaned. "You mean it wasn't official? It's filed through the guild."

"I mean, my buddy got tipsy on Tatoo moonshine and posted it as a prank. He was under the incorrect impression that Krayt Dragons were extinct. My other friend didn't stop him because he was sure no one was dumb enough to go after a Krayt. Um, no offense."

It was official guild, which meant all Fett had to do was sit back and let their lawyer string Luke's jackass friend up by the thumbs until he coughed up the money. Trouble was, it was posted through the New Republic, not as an individual party.

Fett closed his eyes. Luke only had one jackass friend.

"It was Solo, wasn't it?"

"Um, yeah."

Nevermind! The guild would never know about this, because he was going to bury Solo out in the desert.

"I'm so sorry about all of this. We'll talk on the way back to your speeder?"

"Don't have one."

Luke's mouth made an 'osk '. "Did you walk? All the way here?"

"Yeah." Fett shrugged.

"And you aren't hurt or dying?" Luke pressed a hand back through his hair, ruffling the blond waves. "That's incredible. You're one lucky guy."

Fett preened internally. "Luck has nothing to do with it."

"I can see that." Luke thumbed over his shoulder towards the Krayt's corpse. "Can I give you a ride back to town? Where are you staying?"

"Sure." He was about to say Anchorhead, but given that his plans were to raw a Jedi, and Dama thought he was married to Bossk, he thought better of it. "Mos Eisley. The spaceport."

"Oh, good. I'm staying there too." He chuckled, and his hand came up to rub the back of his head. "Honestly, I'm not sure the landspeeder holds enough fuel to make it much further beyond Bestine if I had to make any more stops."

"Lucky coincidence."

"You've got that right. I'm Luke," he held out his hand.

"I know. You already told me." Fett took his hand and shook it. He had a good grip, but the hand was obviously a prosthetic underneath the glove. It was air temperature, for one, and even the best prosthetics couldn't completely hide the sensation of holding a small pile of machinery. "I'm… Lucky."

"I thought it was all skill?" Luke grinned. "Am I going to regret giving a ride to a man with a fake name?"

"I won't be any trouble."

Luke side eyed him, but led him over to a new landspeeder. Fett let out a low whistle.

"There's no way these are legal." He patted one of the engines as he walked past. Still warm, not that it was easy to tell on Tatooine. Somehow, Luke knew where to find him, and fast.

"Aftermarket upgrades." Luke said, swinging over into the speeder and pulling a pair of goggles over his eyes. "Somehow I doubt a man who would take a bounty on a Krayt would care too much about a thousand cc engine."

Fett mouthed 'thousand', before jumping into the speeder and buckling himself in.

"I only realized that someone took the bounty about two hours ago." Luke explained, priming the engine and setting the gear into neutral. "I stopped by Anchorhead to talk to someone, but then I saw the bounty was gone and decided to investigate." He smiled at Fett as he skipped first and set the gear into third. "I'm glad I did."

"I would have been fine without any help." Fett blustered. Luke snorted, then took out the clutch and slammed on the accelerator.

The less said about the drive back to Mos Eisley the better, but Fett realized why it would have taken Luke so much fuel to make the trip to Anchorhead, and he ended up leaving fingerprints in the metal arm rests.

"I think I beat a record." Luke said giddily as he leapt out of the landspeeder like he hadn't just attempted to give Fett cardiac arrhythmia.

"Do you always drive that fast?" Fett climbed out a little more slowly and waited for the ground to stop spinning.

"It's smart to clear Tusken land as fast as possible." Luke said, attaching a bolt to the landspeeder so it couldn't be stolen. "They don't like guests very much."

Fett suspected they probably liked joyriding even less.

"Where are you staying?" Luke flipped his poncho over his shoulder. He was dressed like a native, which, according to the Imperial dossier Fett had once read, he was, but he wore it better than Fett did. He did his best not to leer as Luke bent back into the speeder to grab a duffel, but he wasn't very successful.

The Sisi Driss, Fett didn't say. Instead, he gestured further into the Mos. "Cantina. The big one."

"Oh, sure. I know the place!" Maybe the sunshine did something to you on this planet. "I need to use the comm there to call my friend anyways. I know this won't make up for you nearly dying, but I could buy you something to eat?"

"I didn't nearly die." Fett said.

"Of course not." Luke led him across Kerner Plaza, and then down an alley past a junkyard to Chalmun's Spaceport Cantina. Fett supposed it was the biggest one in Mos Eisley, but it paled in comparison to some of the slime buckets he'd been in on Corellia or Imperial Centre. He supposed they'd go back to calling it Coruscant, now.

The cantina was grim and grimy, and the floor was sticky with a thousand spilled drinks. Someone shouted, a blaster went off, and a body slumped down from the bar. It was his kind of place.

"This place is a little rough, isn't it?" Luke grinned sheepishly, before leading them to a table in the back.

Fett'd been in rougher since he was about ten.

"I didn't know the owner let rooms," Luke continued, "but it's not like I ever came here often." He sat down and put his bag on the table. "And I've been away for a while. This is my first real visit home in years."

Fett supposed a quick trip to kill the Hutt didn't actually count. Jabba kept a townhouse in the city, didn't he? Maybe no one had razed it for cash yet, but Fett doubted it. The way the rumors were flying, his entire palace had been abandoned the second news of his death broke.

Luke was handsome in the dim light, in a naïve, boyish sort of way. He wasn't Fett's type, honestly, and he was becoming less Fett's type the longer they spoke.

It was for this reason that it was confusing why Fett wanted him so badly.

He was nice. Fett didn't do nice.

Boba might've done nice, before every bounty hunter in the galaxy fucked him over before he was fourteen, but Fett, the man he'd become, limited himself to one night stands with the handful of jackasses Jango hadn't been friends with.

He didn't want to end up in a situation where he was kissing someone like Cad Bane and wondering which Fett the man was thinking of.

Fett shuddered.

"Cold?" Luke asked him, raising an eyebrow. "Ah, I'll get some food. Are you picky?"

He'd lived a good portion of his life on ration bars. "Nah."

"Great." Fett watched Luke walk up to the bartender and tug on his sleeves until he turned around. Kid had gumption, and good luck, because he didn't get punched for that move. The bartender instead greeted him like a friend, slapping his back and pouring him a glass of top shelf stuff. Fett watched as the idiot turned it down in favor of a glass of blue milk and some sort of gruelish broth.

He carried the food back with a sheepish grin and settled back into the booth.

"Sorry about that. Last time I was here there was a bit of trouble." He slid the bowl over to Fett. "Did you want some water?"

"Is there poison in this?"

"...What?"

No one was that nice on purpose. A normal person probably would have been comforted, but Fett was more concerned about the severely lacking number of exits in the cantina. He knocked his fist against the wall. Paper and sandstone. He could tear his way out if he needed to.

"Poison. Are you trying to kill me?"

"I'm trying to feed you." Luke had the fall to look offended. "My friend sent you on a dragon hunt, that I'm pretty sure he can't afford, you almost died, and you walked three hundred kilos into the desert. You—"

His pager chirped. He silenced himself with a glare. "I have to take this. Eat your soup."

He walked over to the general use comm,and fed it credits until it turned on, then punched in a code. He didn't bother turning on the visual; he just picked up the receiver and started shouting.

Fett glared at his muck. Solo wasn't going to pay him. Expected, but still somehow disappointing. He considered subletting the task of Solo's murder to the guild lawyer, but decided against it. Even he wasn't that cruel. Still, he could always kill Solo himself, but his ship was impounded, and to Fett's knowledge, he was spending his days on the arm of a princess turned revolutionary turned bounty hunter turned decoration turned galactic leader. Not unreachable, but Fett wasn't in the business of wholesale slaughter, which would happen if he murdered a royal consort (whatever Solo was) in broad daylight. And it'd have to be in broad daylight, because Fett wouldn't bother being sneaky about it.

"Look, this is about that bounty!" Luke shouted into the receiver. "Yes, I'm mad. I'm sitting next to the guy who took it. He was almost bantha bites for that thing. And you need to pay him. You can pick up the corpse if you want. Jawas have probably already picked it over and—"

His tone changed. Something Solo said? Or maybe just another person on the line? Fett'd be happy if Solo stopped talking to him.

"I'll stop yelling, but it's—fine." He pouted. "When are you going to be free again for training? That's kind of a long time. Okay. Okay. Sure. I love you too."

He looked stupidly happy when he said it. Fett swallowed a mouthful of soup.

The way the Eyecandy acted towards Solo during her failed rescue attempt, it was obvious to assume they were an item. Apparently, he was wrong, and it was the blond, not the brunette that Solo was sleeping with. Frankly, he didn't really care, because this gave him the unique opportunity to cuckold Han Solo, and Fett was an idiot if he was going to pass that up.

"I'm sorry about all that." Luke clipped his pager back onto his belt. It was a retrofitted Imperial shipwide communicator, one of the little sleek ones that could only pick up a signal if they had another network to piggyback on. "What a mess."

He rested his jaw on his fist and blew his cheeks out. "Why'd you take that bounty anyways? You don't look like a dragon hunter."

"Money." Fett said. "My ship was impounded. Some Jawas took my stuff."

"Really?" Luke crinkled his brow. "What'd you get out of it?"

"What?"

"Jawas don't just take stuff." Luke waved his hand. "They've got reasons. It's called the Give and Take. Your speeder breaks down in the middle of Tusken land, they'll give you a ride back to the city, but they keep your speeder."

Fett thought about his leg. "Just a ride."

Luke rubbed his chin. "It might be tricky getting your stuff back. They're sometimes weird to deal with about favors."

"Why're you here?" Fett took a sip of the blue milk. It was too thick and too sweet, but it was fluid, and he could relate to jerky at this point.

"I'm looking for a woman."

"Aren't we all."

Luke snorted. "Not like that. A Twi'lek woman. I don't know her name."

"Lots of Twi'leks on Tatooine. Slavery's legal."

"No it's not."

"Slavery's overlooked."

Luke sighed and nodded. He seemed upset by this basic fact that didn't personally affect him. Fett's heart sank.

He didn't like to use the slur, but he was coming to the slow realization that Luke was… delicate. Gentle. Possibly a little sensitive.

"I've been here a while." Fett said, instead of leaving in disgust, like he should have. "Give me a description."

"Twi'lek, female. She was a little shorter than me." Luke held his hand around his shoulders. "Green. I believe she was a dancer at Jabba's."

Fett watched him. "Oola?"

"Oola!" His face brightened, "Yes! Do you know where she is?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"I told her I would come back for her. Well," he amended, "I told her friend I would come back for her. I tried to save both of them but Jabba's majordomo took her away."

Fett could tell he was leaving something out, but didn't press it.

"She's dead." He said bluntly.

"...What?" Luke was still watching him, his grin frozen on his face, his blue eyes wide.

"She's dead." Fett repeated, finishing off his food. "Rancor."

"I don't—" Luke cut himself off. "Oh."

He settled back into his seat, staring at his hands where they rested on the scratched tabletop.

"I really want to accuse you of being a liar."

Fett shrugged. "Do what you want."

"What happened?"

"Jabba got mad. It's hard to predict his moods. Dropped the floor from under her."

Luke pressed a hand over his eyes. Fett turned away and sat in a different chair.

"What—" Luke's question was interrupted by a half-snort, half-sob, "what are you doing?"

"I don't like watching grown men cry." Fett responded. This was the same man who killed a rancor unarmed. He'd held back a Krayt's tail with the power of his mind, and here he was, sniffling over a dead dancer.

The Duros already sitting at the table he commandeered glanced between him and Luke.

"None of your business, blue." Fett said.

A strangled noise came out of Luke, and Fett twisted back to look at him. He was laughing, but the way tears were streaming out of his eyes didn't really make it seem like he was too amused by the situation. Fett waited at the Duros' table until Luke stopped making noises.

"You drinking that?" Fett pointed to the half full bottle of Tatoo whiskey.

The Duros frowned, and pulled it closer.

It twisted some part of him he'd forgotten he had to hear Luke sniffle and snuffle like that.

He exhaled. "Are you alright?"

"If I was just a little bit sooner." Luke shook his head, "or I was faster, better at talking, she wouldn't have been in this situation in the first place. Oh, what am I going to tell Sienn'rha?"

Fett exchanged glances with the Duros, who shrugged.

"Look," Fett cleared his throat, "when I was little, my dad sometimes left me on my own while he went to do jobs. He would never tell me how long he'd be gone, but he left food, for his eel. He'd be back when the food ran out." Usually. "You know what Kaminoian sea eels eat?"

"No." Luke's eyes were still watery, and his voice was grossly nasal. The Duros shook his head.

"Iiaa. Sea mice. They're these little critters; their feet turn into flippers in the water. Big eyes. Real cute. Anyways, he left five of them. I fed the eel two, then got a little," pathetic, "sympathetic. I decided to set one free. Put it out in the backyard. It got eaten. So, I figured, not the right place. The next day, I walked down to the pier, and dropped it in the ocean. It got eaten. I fed the last one to the eel." He nodded.

Luke stared at him. "That was a horrible story. Are you alright? Do you have trauma?"

"What happened to the eel?" The Duros asked.

"We had to leave. Dropped it in the ocean. It got—"

"Okay," Luke pushed himself to his feet. "We're done here."

He wiped his face with his poncho and walked over to settle with the barkeep.

"Tough luck." The Duros took a drink, nodding. Fett took the bottle from him and dumped it in the soup.


	7. Chapter 7

Luke was not done, but that was mostly because of a sandstorm warning droning over the shortwave. He sat across the room, glaring at Fett whenever they accidentally made eye contact.

There was no way Han Solo was gentle enough to keep a guy like this around.

"Hey!" Fett shouted across the mostly empty bar. It was past midnight. The dedicated drunks were long drunk, and the handful of storm stranded idiots were tucked away in private corners. "Did you cry when you killed the rancor?"

Luke's face twisted, but he didn't respond. Fett returned to leaning against the uncomfortable booth and flicking shells at each other across the table, in an approximation of limmie.

"How do you know about that?" Luke shouted back.

"How'd you fix my head?"

Luke settled back into a glare. He looked like a pouting tooka when he did it. Fett did his best not to be charmed. It was like he gave off an aura of needing to have his hair ruffled.

Fett settled back in his seat.

He hadn't liked Jabba—well, he liked his money—but it was uncomfortable knowing he was dead. Jabba had been a fixture in Fett's life since he was eleven and could still sleep through the night without twitching awake at the small hours of the morning with a hand on his blaster. Now, he was gone. Good riddance.

He felt aimless.

"Thank you." He said it quietly in hopes that Luke wouldn't hear it, but hedging by the soft, smug look on his face, he did.

It was like there were five of him rolling around in his head, all arguing about what kind of person he could be now that Boba Fett was off the table for a few months. He chalked it up to the whiskey, and took another sip. He grimaced when it hit his ulcer, and then again when it hit his stomach. 

He rubbed his forehead.

His headache was gone, and he hadn't gurgled up blood since Luke did… whatever, to his head. He wasn't back to his prime condition, but he was a fair sight better.

Fett exhaled and stood up, depositing his stolen bottle with the bartender for the glass deposit. Luke was doing his best to pay attention to the table, but Fett could always tell when he was being watched.

"Hey." He slid into the booth behind Luke, stretching his arm back so his elbow was propped on the back of Luke's bench.

"What?"

Fett shrugged. "I dunno. I'm not used to feeling guilty. I'm not sure how this is supposed to go."

"Didn't your parents ever teach you to apologise?"

"My dad died when I was a kid."

"I'm sorry to hear that." Luke shifted. "My father, uh, died before I was born."

Guy was a terrible liar.

"My mother, too." He continued. "Well, she died just after I was born, but I never knew her. You?"

"Hm, yeah. Never knew my mama." Well, he still wasn't sure which gestation pod he'd been pulled from. If one wanted to get very technical, he wasn't even really sure which Boba Fett he was, given that the Kaminoans gestated five for Jango, and discarded the defective clones. Fett liked to think he was number one, like he was in all things, except apparently romance. "You know how it is."

"I looked her up." Luke continued. "She was a queen, I think."

"Big shot. You royalty?"

Luke snorted. "Of what? Sand? No, uh, it wasn't hereditary. She was in the Senate, after. Funded a few anti-war bills."

"You know her name, or just her job?"

"Hm? Oh, uh, yeah. Amidala. I don't even know if I'm pronouncing it correctly."

"You aren't." Fett sat up and twisted in his seat. "Padma Amidala. You're serious?"

Looking at him now, Fett could see the traces of the senator in the broad set of his mouth, and—stupid that he even noticed it—the shape of his ears.

"You are serious." Fett settled back. "Hell."

"Did you know her?" Luke's eyes widened. He looked buggish, and maybe like if he sneezed or blinked too hard, his baby blues might pop out.

"She was famous." Fett looked down at his hands. "She visited me in prison, once."

"Jailbird?"

Fett snorted. "Yeah. Asked me why I shaved my head. Got upset when I told her."

Luke glanced off to the side. The image on his wanted poster didn't match his current appearance. Shame, because he looked nice with longer hair. "Less to grab in a fight, yeah. How old were you?"

"Old enough." Something twisted in him. "Eleven."

Luke's face twisted. "Sometimes I think maybe the Empire wasn't so bad. I mean, not like the Republic. My aunt's family are freedmen. So was my grandmother."

"Empire is plenty bad, they just don't stick kids in jail." Fett amended himself. "Human kids."

"And no slaves, either, except one of my friends, but he isn't human."

"Both shit, huh?" Fett jostled Luke's arm with his elbow. "Who ended up killing Jabba? That your work?"

"No," Luke shook his head. "Pr—um. My sister."

"Shit. Amidala must've popped you two out in between chugging engine fuel. What, there a third one lurking around that killed the Emperor?"

"Um." Luke went a little red. It flushed up the tops of his cheeks, made his eyes bright. He might've been saying something, but Fett was too stupid enraptured to notice.

"Did you know Oola, at all?"

Fett blinked. "Not much."

He saw Luke's face fall. His stomach twisted again. "You infect me with something when you fucked with my head?"

"What?"

"I feel like something eating my gut every time I lie to you."

Luke eyed him flatly. "Those are your morals."

"Never needed them before." Fett waved his hand. "No, I didn't know her. But I think she was happy, sometimes. At least she wasn't always miserable. She liked to dance. You could tell." He glanced down. "Maybe, would've been better if she was doing it someplace else."

Luke rubbed his face again. "At least he's dead now."

"Put a lot of people out of work."

"And I guess you're one of them? You were a guard or something? I can't imagine Jabba would've wanted you dancing."

"Rude. You don't know the moves I've got."

Luke glanced at him, up and down. "Not many, I think."

"Brat." Fett scratched his chin. His cheeks felt warm, but it was sometimes hard to tell if he was really blushing under the scarring.

"Most people say I'm blessed with a sunny disposition."

"You're blessing me with a headache. Yeah. Guard." He was embarrassed, wasn't he? Or perhaps flustered. One of those emotions he didn't like to remember he had, and liked even less to feel. Too warm. Too soft.

Something like it, anyway.

He itched to teach Luke how to use a damn sword properly.

"Why do I feel like you're lying to me again?"

"Does it matter?"

"Well, you could've tried to kill me."

"If I did, it obviously didn't work. And if I did, you probably tried to kill me too." 

"Then I guess we're a pair of dangerous men."

Delicate nothing, he was a menace.

Fett leaned back, resting his head on the seat so he could catch Luke's eye. Luke snorted, and mirrored his position, lacing his hands over his stomach. His eyes glinted in the light.

"You have a room here?"

"Um."

That wasn't the way this was supposed to go.

"Oh, sorry. I guess I'm misreading the situation." Luke made to sit up, but Boba managed to cough out a sentence before he did.

"I can get one." He blurted out.

Luke raised his eyebrows and settled back onto the bench. "I'm not cuckolding somebody am I?"

The hysterical thought of Bossk flashed through Boba's head, and he repressed a shudder. "Uh, no. Am I?"

"Not a chance."

Damn. There went his ability to fuck with Solo. Still, Boba reflected as he scrambled across the bar to buy a night from Chalmun, he couldn't exactly bring himself to care that much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh the title is from Take You Back, by Orville Peck, btw

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote most of this back in may. So I watched about halfway through mando season 2 ep 1 and decided that I needed to post this now. Swear I can't see the future


End file.
